Welcome to Wood Workers Safety Week 2012!  Woot!

I know, you have heard EVERYTHING about shop safety, right?  You’ve heard it all, seen it all, tried it all and you can’t stand to see something else about it.  Sure. But, it never hurts to have a refresher to help remind you about how to prevent painful, disfiguring and costly injuries.

While all tools pose a potential safety risk, the table saw remains the number one culprit in shop injuries. Accidental blade contact and kickback are two of the common ways that people can be injured.

Of course, there are a number of safety devices included in your table saw.  Whether it’s flesh-sensing technology or a simple splitter and blade guard, each of these gadgets works to help prevent mishaps. While they are useful, some woodworkers see them as non-essential add ons that just slow them down.

This week, look at your table saw setup and let us know how much safety equipment you use on your table saw. Is it the whole shebang, or do you get rid of those safety devices?

It’s like the planets have aligned today in the woodworking blog-o-sphere.  First of all, the FOURTH episode of the Modern Woodworkers Association online discussion has been posted.  This month, we’re talking all things Sketchup and we do a review of an educational video to see if it really can improve your designing.  Pull up a chair and listen to it here:

Wood-Mizer Portable Sawmills

When you want wood, you go to a hardwood supplier or local sawmill and get some awesome stuff. When the old tree you used to climb in behind your grandparent’s house blows  over during a storm and you don’t want to see it ground up into mulch, you need to bring in a portable sawmill.

The folks at Wood-Mizer are specialists in portable wood mills, but that’s only one part of their offerings. In fact, they sell all of the the equipment to take a tree from its whole form to useable lumber. Even if you don’t want to own your own, the company can put you in touch with local portable sawmill owners who just might be able to help you out.

Think about it. When I first started woodworking – and for the first few years of my time in the shop – I was a lone wolf. A maverick. I was a man unto myself.

Oh, sure, I had the Woodworker’s Website Association online. It was a great forum to belong to, and I had the chance to virtually meet a bunch of other woodworkers who were doing things over in there shops. I started posting there in 1999, and it was pretty cool. Through those contacts, I was invited to a woodworking school where I met a number of great woodworkers – oh, and this guy named Marc Spagnuolo.

Speaking about that guy Marc, it took a couple of years after we met, but blammo – he created The Wood Whisperer website, and eventually the Wood Whisperer Guild. This online community gives me the opportunity to push the envelope in my woodworking – to try new things I would have never considered doing. While it is a virtual community, I know I’m not alone. I could read about how to do different techniques, get feedback from the other guild members and show off my successes.

Just this past year, I also became a member of the Modern Woodworkers Association. Chris Adkins, Dyami Plotke and several other woodworkers came up with this awesome concept at the last Woodworking in America conference. With so many woodworkers looking for online content and posting their projects, the MWA has become a great place to check in and let the woodworking world know what’s going on in your shop.

While I have been woodworking in my shop here in Florida, I was unaware of a great resource right in my own backyard. The St. Petersburg Woodcrafters Guild has been meeting just down the road from me for about as long as I have been living here in Florida. Every month, local woodworkers have been coming together to swap stories, brag about their exploits, point each other in the right direction when making tool purchases and offer advice when a member became stuck on a technique. It was just this past February when I attended my first meeting … and last night I took the plunge and became a member.

Now, I go to my shop all alone when I want to escape the real world and reconnect with the craft I enjoy. But, I know better. I’m not just by myself … I’ve got a lot of support.  That’s pretty reassuring.

Part of the fun of being a woodworker is that friends like to keep an eye out for things that you might be interested in. I’ve had people find beat up, ugly, rusty hunks of iron that might have been planes and give them to me. I’ve had people hand me half-used cans of dried up paint to use as a finish on an upcoming project. Then there is the wood.

My friend Al from down the street stopped by my shop on a recent sunny Saturday morning.  He was driving his pickup truck and asked me to check out something he had in the bed. I looked in and found some very interesting offcuts.

Yes, these are the tail ends of some glue-lam beams that were being pitched, and he wondered if I might be able to use them. Never one to turn down something unique, I took them.

Al told me they were indeed cutoffs from a project going up near his office. They are the support beams for a common space in an apartment/condo building, providing the inside with a tremendous wide-open span. I’m sure they would probably be clear finished or painted to match the interior decor.

They are massive, made of southern yellow pine. Five inches thick and 13 1/2 inches wide, they are made by gluing up numerous smaller boards.  Obviously, from looking at the grain, there was no effort spent in trying to make them look like one massive board, but hey, that’s cool. I’m sure that they are at least as strong – if not stronger – than a solid SYP beam of a similar size … if you could find one. Gosh – a couple of these things, a stand, a vise and you’d have one heck of a workbench…

Al told me that the beams were pretty darned long, and I wondered just how they connected them. Sure enough, they were using finger joints, and staggering those joints between solid pieces, so, believe me, they seem plenty strong.

They were so impressive, that even Iggy came by to take a look at their – how shall I put it – monolithic type appearance (Has anyone seen Mr. Kubrik’s assistant lately?).  I’m wondering what the old chimp may be up to, but I’m sure he’ll come up with one heck of a project for these big and beefy parts.

Face vises. Wagon vises. Leg vises. Shoulder vises. When it comes to work holding tools, there are many devices (sorry, just had to throw that one in there) woodworkers can turn to.

From simple shop-made tools to fancy, elaborate highly-engineered cast iron behemoths, there is a work holding contraption that can immobilize your work for just about every taste, preference and price point.

This week, we’re looking to see how many vises are on the main workbench in your shop. Do you have a vise in every corner of your bench, or do you rely on other work holding devices?

Time Warp Tools’ wooden bench dogs

RUFF!  Bench dogs are some of the handiest things you can have for your workbench. These babies set into dog holes in your bench allowing you to clamp work down securely using either the dog in your bench vise, wedges or other holding contrivances.

Many of these bench dogs are metal. And, should you plane past the edge of your work and your plane iron hits the metal dog, well, get ready to do some serious sharpening. And, if you really crank down on the pressure to hold the work down, metal dogs are more likely to mar the face of the board they bear against.  That’s why wooden dogs are preferred… and that’s where the folks at Time Warp Tools can help.

These babies are made of kiln-dried, quartersawn ash which is both plenty strong to immobilize the workpiece and soft enough to avoid causing any dents.  Just as importantly, cutting edges aren’t affected in the least when they accidentally hit the dog.  A sprung ball catch allows the dogs to hold their vertical position.

Now, if you need a plane to go with that snazzy new set of bench dogs, why not check out their hand made wooden planes?